Lottery game tickets are frequently sold in retail establishments such as convenience stores, liquor stores, and the like. These and other establishments selling lottery tickets are sensitive to the costs of counter space used, and labor required in the sale and redemption of lottery tickets.
Some lottery customers do not want to wait for a weekly or daily drawing. These customers may purchase “instant-win” lottery tickets. Such tickets may also involve games, such as lotto, battleship, bingo, or other games that increase customer interest and enjoyment in the purchase of such tickets. Instant-win lottery tickets are generally sold to retailers in pre-printed books or bundles. A pre-printed ticket may have a printed indicia or message indicating the ticket is a winner and/or the prize amount, as well as human or machine-readable codes for authenticating winning tickets. These indicia, messages, and codes may be hidden, e.g., with a peel-off or scratch-off coating. Commonly, whether an instant-win ticket is a winner is predetermined prior to the sale of the ticket.
Particularly for more complicated games, purchasers and/or players of instant-win lottery tickets may have difficulty in determining the win or non-win status of their purchased tickets. For example, after removing the peel-off or scratch-off coating, instant-win lottery ticket players may have difficulty in determining from the indicia printed on the ticket whether the ticket is a winning ticket or a losing ticket. Such may be particularly the case, when, for example, the game and/or its rules are complicated. Consequently, a high percentage of winning tickets may not be redeemed, which may be problematic for lottery operators since lotteries may have statutorily regulated payouts. Also, winning tickets may encourage winners to play again repeatedly.
Players may wish to confirm the win or non-win status of their tickets by returning them to retailers who may process the tickets, for example, via a machine readable device to be certain of the ticket's status. However, retailers may not want to spend excessive amounts of time dealing with redemptions of tickets that are not actually winners and may mistreat customers who return such tickets so that they are discouraged from future playing. Therefore, it is desirable to minimize the amount of time retailers spend confirming the win or non-win status of tickets. At the same time lottery providers want to insure that lotteries are protected from fraud, including fraud by retailers. Accordingly, efficient and reliable approaches to ticket redemption and/or ticket status confirmation may be desirable